Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

[brihard]

Even with reduced Sunday schedules, surely there must be a bus needing conducting somewhere...

 

[Edward Campbell]

I have suggested, a few times, that there is a huge potential for a crisis between China and Russia over Siberia. In this article, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the New York Times, Frank Jacobs (author of Strange Maps) suggests how it might happen:

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/07/03/where-do-borders-need-to-be-redrawn/why-china-will-reclaim-siberia?smid=tw-share

Why China Will Reclaim Siberia

Frank Jacobs, the author of "Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities," blogs at Big Think.

UPDATED JULY 4, 2014

“A land without people for a people without land.” At the turn of the 20th century, that slogan promoted Jewish migration to Palestine. It could be recycled today, justifying a Chinese takeover of Siberia. Of course, Russia's Asian hinterland isn't really empty (and neither was Palestine). But Siberia is as resource-rich and people-poor as China is the opposite. The weight of that logic scares the Kremlin.

Moscow recently restored the Imperial Arch in the Far Eastern frontier town of Blagoveshchensk, declaring: “The earth along the Amur was, is and always will be Russian.” But Russia's title to all of the land is only about 150 years old. And the sprawl of highrises in Heihe, the Chinese boomtown on the south bank of the Amur, right across from Blagoveshchensk, casts doubt on the “always will be” part of the old czarist slogan.

Siberia – the Asian part of Russia, east of the Ural Mountains – is immense. It takes up three-quarters of Russia's land mass, the equivalent of the entire U.S. and India put together. It's hard to imagine such a vast area changing hands. But like love, a border is real only if both sides believe in it. And on both sides of the Sino-Russian border, that belief is wavering.

The border, all 2,738 miles of it, is the legacy of the Convention of Peking of 1860 and other unequal pacts between a strong, expanding Russia and a weakened China after the Second Opium War. (Other European powers similarly encroached upon China, but from the south. Hence the former British foothold in Hong Kong, for example.)

The 1.35 billion Chinese people south of the border outnumber Russia's 144 million almost 10 to 1. The discrepancy is even starker for Siberia on its own, home to barely 38 million people, and especially the border area, where only 6 million Russians face over 90 million Chinese. With intermarriage, trade and investment across that border, Siberians have realized that, for better or for worse, Beijing is a lot closer than Moscow.

Joe Burgess/The New York Times

The vast expanses of Siberia would provide not just room for China's huddled masses, now squeezed into the coastal half of their country by the mountains and deserts of western China. The land is already providing China, “the factory of the world,” with much of its raw materials, especially oil, gas and timber. Increasingly, Chinese-owned factories in Siberia churn out finished goods, as if the region already were a part of the Middle Kingdom's economy.

One day, China might want the globe to match the reality. In fact, Beijing could use Russia's own strategy: hand out passports to sympathizers in contested areas, then move in militarily to "protect its citizens." The Kremlin has tried that in Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and most recently the Crimea, all formally part of other post-Soviet states, but controlled by Moscow. And if Beijing chose to take Siberia by force, the only way Moscow could stop would be using nuclear weapons.

There is another path: Under Vladimir Putin, Russia is increasingly looking east for its future – building a Eurasian Union even wider than the one inaugurated recently in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, a staunch Moscow ally. Perhaps two existing blocs – the Eurasian one encompassing Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – could unite China, Russia and most of the 'stans. Putin's critics fear that this economic integration would reduce Russia, especially Siberia, to a raw materials exporter beholden to Greater China. And as the Chinese learned from the humiliation of 1860, facts on the ground can become lines on the map.

 

[CougarKing]

China unveils its largest- and the world's largest- diesel submarine:

China Displays World’s Largest Conventional Submarine

 

China’s state-run media is reporting that Beijing publicly displayed what is believed to be the largest conventional submarine in the world last week.

According to Want China Times, which cited a Chinese-language report in the state-run Guangming Daily, China’s new Type 032 Qing-class test submarine was on display last week at the Sixth Shipping Expo held in Guangdong province in southern China from June 6 to June 8. IHS Jane’s also noted the report was carried in China’s state media outlets.

The Type 032 submarine first came to foreign analysts’ attention in 2010 when pictures emerged on the Chinese internet of the vessel in a Wuhan-based shipyard (at that time, some began calling it a Type 043 submarine, causing some confusion).

According to Global Security, development of the submarine began in early 2005 followed by construction in 2008. Construction was completed in 2010, and sea trials ended in the fall of 2012. It entered PLA service in October of that same year, and testing commenced in 2013.

For some time now, defense analysts have believed that the Type 032 has a surfaced displacement of 3,797 tonnes and a submerged displacement of 6,628 tonnes. The new reports in China’s state media confirm this. According to IHS Jane’s, the new reports say that the Type 032 is “a 3,797 tonne vessel that can carry a crew of 200 sailors and researchers. It is said to be 92.6 m long with a height of 17.2 m.” This displacement makes it the world’s largest diesel-electric submarine.

(...EDITED)

The Diplomat

 

[tomahawk6]

Retired Gen Xu Caihou has been arrested and expelled from the CP.The corruption purge continues.

http://www.china-defense-mashup.com/former-pla-general-xu-caihou-to-face-court-martial.html

Former PLA General Xu Caihou to face court martial

2014-06-30 — A former top general was expelled from the Communist Party for alleged corruption and his case handed to prosecutors for investigation, the Politburo announced yesterday.

Xu Caihou , a former vice-chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission, is the latest senior military figure implicated in President Xi Jinping’s anti-graft campaign.

 

[tomahawk6]

Model of Type 032.Double hull with max dive depth of 200m.

 

[CougarKing]

Merkel meets Xi:

Yahoo News

German Chancellor meets Chinese Premier in Beijing

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in Beijing as she continues a visit to China aimed at boosting ties between the two countries.

And one of the results:

A purchase of 100+ civilian helicopters that may have military implications later on...

While the article says "Chinese companies", take note that many of the larger domestic companies (e.g. Huawei, NORINCO, COSCO shipping)in China are actually state-owned, or at least have key board and management staff members that are party members.

Reuters

China signs deal to purchase 100 Airbus helicopters
BEIJING Sun Jul 6, 2014 11:03pm EDT

(Reuters) - Airbus Group NV's helicopter division signed agreements on Monday to sell 100 helicopters to Chinese companies.

(...EDITED)

 

[CougarKing]

Major update: China deploys its Jin class SSBNs to the South China Sea.

Interaksyon (Philippine news site)

China deploys missile-armed nuclear subs to South China Sea
By: DJ Sta. Ana, News5
July 8, 2014 8:21 PM
MANILA - China has deployed three nuclear powered ballistic missile-capable submarines to its South China Sea fleet to further stamp its power and influence in the region, where it is embroiled in territorial disputes with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Chinese media released a photo, apparently taken last May, of three Type 094 missile submarines docked at a Yulin naval base on Hainan Island.

The submarines' presence at Hainan Island, which is China's main base covering the South China Sea, is seen as a major development as this the first time Beijing deployed its ballistic missile submarines to a forward base.

Meanwhile, the Philippine Navy marked two milestones in this year's CARAT (Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training) naval exercises with the US Navy.

One: The Philippine Navy carried out ship borne helicopter operations using its new Augusta / Westland AW109E helicopters from BRP Ramon Alcaraz and BRP Gregorio del Pilar.

(...EDITED)

Plus a photo from last May of the 3 Chinese boomers at the PLA-N South Sea Fleet's base at Hainan Island: (photo c/o Free Beacon site)

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the New York Times, is an interesting look at the complexities and costs of corruption in China:

http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/10/battle-between-2-state-giants-cctv-and-bank-of-china-unravels/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=World&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body&_r=2&

Battle Between 2 State Giants, CCTV and Bank of China, Unravels

By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

JULY 10, 2014

Morale is low at the state broadcaster China Central Television, after about half a dozen senior personnel there were detained on suspicion of corruption or involvement in major political scandals. Other staffers are said to be too worried about the investigations to work properly or are hampered by a lack of direction from the top, according to employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

But a CCTV report accusing the Bank of China of illegal practices has jolted viewers nationwide and has revealed deep cynicism among Chinese citizens about two pillars of their society: the powerful broadcaster and the behemoth bank, reportedly the world’s eighth largest in terms of assets.

The report on Wednesday accused the state-run bank of money laundering, through its Youhuitong service, which enables wealthy Chinese to convert large amounts of renminbi into foreign currency to emigrate overseas under investment visa programs.


By law, the Chinese may take the equivalent of $50,000 out of the country per year, leaving it something of a mystery as to how so many emigrate through visa programs that may require millions of renminbi converted into foreign currency.

Emigration is an attractive choice for wealthy Chinese, because of concerns over environmental pollution, education, health care, food safety and legal protection in a country without an independent judiciary.

The Bank of China denied CCTV’s allegations, saying that its service is legal.

‘‘Reports of ‘underground money farms’ and ‘money laundering’ have no basis in fact,’’ the bank said in a statement late Wednesday that was amended shortly after publication to remove the name of the source of the allegations and other details.

On Thursday, the Hong Kong-based newspaper South China Morning Post reported that another state lender, China Citic Bank, was offering a similar service. The paper quoted unnamed experts as saying that the programs were “not an illegal business.”

One Bank of China branch alone, in Guangdong Province, has sent about 6 billion renminbi, or about $1 billion, out of the country this year, the South China Morning Post wrote, citing the CCTV report.

The sums transferred are “gigantic,” commented Li Youhuan, whose Sina Weibo account identified him as an economics professor in Guangdong and the head of the magazine Enterprise Social Responsibility. Exposing them would shame the nation, he wrote.

“About the BoC incident, there’s something I’d like to remind people about,” Mr. Li wrote on the financial website Yicai. “Most banks have such business, and BoC is absolutely not the only one.” Supervisory authorities had “not dared” to investigate, he wrote, apparently hinting at official involvement or other powerful backing.

Guangdong, the reported epicenter of the Bank of China’s controversial service, has been shaken by the arrest of the Communist Party secretary of Guangzhou, the provincial capital, and an investigation into hundreds of “naked officials,” so-called because they send their families and much of their assets abroad while remaining in China.

Online reactions to the CCTV report came swiftly, including from one person quoted in the television program who said his words were taken out of context.

It “improperly quoted my comments which were made at a different time about a different subject,” Liu Weiming, a financial analyst, said on his Sina Weibo account.

One online commenter said Mr. Liu’s post showed how frightened he was.

“This person is terrified,” wrote Li Songjie99. “Corruption in the finance industry is a disaster. This person is very clear about the scope of its power.”

Jessica, another commenter, wrote: “I don’t trust either of them. One is the state bank, the other is the state television station. I don’t trust them.”

A person called Suddenly Thinking Dao Ideals commented: “I believe CCTV. They wouldn’t have published this without the approval of the top-level management, so they wouldn’t just publish naïvely. The Big Four banks have too much power. They are harming the name of China by doing this kind of thing.”

By Thursday afternoon, both the original CCTV report and related coverage by state-run media were disappearing from the Internet, possibly reflecting sensitivity over a report of large-scale corruption by a state enterprise during a rigorous campaign President Xi Jinping has been waging against official corruption.

CCTV itself is falling foul of that campaign. Several senior employees, including the director general of the CCTV-2 channel, who was also its advertising director, Guo Zhenxi, have been detained on suspicion of corruption.

An anchorwoman, Ye Yingchun, is also reportedly in detention in connection with criminal charges said to be building against China’s former security czar, Zhou Yongkang, her former lover who has also been detained, according to insiders who requested anonymity for fear of repercussions.

This year, CCTV did not reveal the extent of its revenue for its advertising slots for 2014, according to the newspaper Global Times, the first time it did not release such figures. Last year, the paper wrote, the station earned a record 15.88 billion renminbi from such slots.

I know I'm repeating myself, but we, in the West, must understand just how much corruption, which is endemic in China, top to bottom, saps its strength.

If, and it's a big IF, China can manage this HUGE problem then it will be like a major boost in productivity, giving it more and more wealth and power.

 

[Edward Campbell]

China is famous, infamous, for failed mega-projects, see: this article about the infamous New South China Mall in Dongguan, in South China, which was the largest shopping mall in the world but now lies as an empty ruin.

This is another megaproject ...

They, literally, chopped the top off a mountain in Guangxi Province (which is in South China, bordering Vietnam) to build an airport.

The Chinese can build big, the Nicaragua canal and, even, the Kra Isthmus canal can happen ... but the fact that something can be done done doesn't mean it should be done or is even necessary.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I've mentioned before that pollution is a serious problem for China, not because of global warming, which the govermnet appears to see as an international political (rather than environmental) issue, but because the people, the masses of ordinary Chinese, don't like it. Even dictatorships must listen to the people, and, according to China Daily, a pretty reliable, demi-official, source, Beijing will impose low sulfur coal burning rules next month.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Some good news for China (and for Australia and Canada, by extension, because both are resource based economies that are sensitive to Chinese demand), and, maybe, bad news who those who fear China's rise as a military power, in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Financial Times:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/53fafa48-0cb8-11e4-90fa-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz37crPcU1r

China GDP shows progress on rebalancing

By Gabriel Wildau in Shanghai

July 16, 2014

China’s economy grew by 7.5 per cent in the second quarter, topping expectations and suggesting stimulus efforts to stabilise growth have succeeded in offsetting the impact of a weak property market.

Jitters over slowing growth and faultlines in the world’s second-biggest economy have been percolating through markets, but the second-quarter figure came bang on the level Beijing is targeting for annual growth this year.

China has sought to stimulate growth through a series of measures, including infrastructure spending, and lifting bank lending. Economists in favour of more structural reform had warned that aggressive efforts to boost short-term growth risked exacerbating distortions in the economy, including near-record-high house prices and heavy reliance on fixed-asset investment to drive growth.

Yet data released on Wednesday by the National Bureau of Statistics suggest that policy makers have successfully calibrated their stimulus to shore up growth without significantly setting back the cause of structural reform.

Moreover, the lion’s share of economic growth came from shoppers rather than government, suggesting Beijing is making progress on its longstanding bid to rebalance the economy towards domestic consumption and away from fixed investment.

“It’s not hard to loosen monetary policy. It’s not hard to throw money at infrastructure. The real test is, can they walk and chew gum at the same time?” asked Stephen Green, head of greater China research at Standard Chartered in Hong Kong. “Now that the data has stabilised, can they double down on rolling out some of the reforms?”

Lu Ting, chief China economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, noted that Beijing’s stimulus was focused on raising spending on railway and social housing, using its own financing and thus limiting any negative impact on the financial system.

Fiscal spending rose 26 per cent year-on-year in June, according to government data. Analysts say direct fiscal spending by the central government, whose overall debt remains low, is a healthier form of stimulus than projects funded by local governments borrowing through opaque financing vehicles.

The ramp-up in infrastructure spending also helped drive a 17.3 per cent year-on-year rise in fixed asset investment in the first half of the year, even as property investment slowed to its weakest level since 2009.

The 3.6 percentage points of overall growth generated by investment in the first half, however, was less than consumption, which contributed 4.1 percentage points. (Net exports contracted 0.2 per cent.)

Yet while economists applauded the data many remain cautious given faultlines in the economy, particularly the property market and spiralling debt levels. The flagging property market is expected to drag on growth in the second half: inventories of unsold flats was up 30 per cent year-on-year by end-May, according to a report by E-house China.

Increased inventories forces developers to delay new housing starts and slow down existing ones, reducing construction activity and in turn denting demand for basic commodities like steel, cement and non-ferrous metals. That means the government is likely to introduce further “mini stimulus” measures to support growth.

“We believe that further monetary policy easing across the board will be needed to reduce the downside risks facing the economy and help the Chinese authorities to deliver the 7.5 per cent growth target,” Liu Ligang, chief greater China economist at ANZ Bank in Hong Kong, said in a note.

Chinese bank loans and other forms of credit grew at their fastest pace for three months in June, according to data released on Tuesday, in a sign that authorities have opened the credit taps in a bid to stabilise a slowing economy, while potentially backsliding on efforts to curb excessive debt.

But some analysts say the June credit data are likely to prove an outlier and doesn’t signal a comprehensive loosening of monetary policy.

State media on Tuesday quoted a senior central bank official predicting that total social financing, a broad measure of debt and equity fundraising from various sources, is likely to hit Rmb18.5tn ($3tn) for the year.

The unusually detailed forecast by Song Shengcheng, head of the research and statistics department at People’s Bank of China, implies 16.2 per cent growth in China’s outstanding credit, according to Zhu Haibin, chief China economist at JPMorgan.

Such growth would represent a slowdown in credit growth from previous years, but it would still exceed nominal GDP, which economist forecast will grow by around 9.6 per cent. That means China’s overall debt-to-GDP ratio will continue to climb, albeit at a slower pace.

I have mentioned before that, a few years ago, a middle ranked Chinese official told me that 8% was the target for growth because that was the rate the leadership saw as necessary to maintain social harmony. The social harmony thing is critical to the CCP, it is the equivalent of the ancient (and well established) notion of the mandate of heaven ~ it's what gives the CCP the right, even duty to govern.

I have also mentioned that I think that the best way to help long term, steady GDP growth (and to survive the inevitable recessions) is to tackle the endemic coruption that pervades almost every aspect of Chinese economic life at every level.

 

[Edward Campbell]

China has manifold problems, some serious, some normal for any national economy, but of them all I would put one at the very top of the list: water.

Look at this graphic:

Source: http://greenleapforward.com/2010/01/06/charting-chinas-water-future/

Now, look at this article.

Not only does China have a supply problem, the water is does have is of poor quality.

Several billions of US dollars can and will improve the latter situation but supply will remain problematical.

There is new, fresh water is Est Asia without significant demand ... but it is all North of China.

Further to this issue, which I regard as more serious than oil, here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Foreign Affairs, is an interesting analysis, with some prescriptions, about the problem:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141643/sulmaan-khan/suicide-by-drought

Suicide By Drought
How China is Destroying Its Own Water Supply

By Sulmaan Khan

JULY 18, 2014

On the grasslands of the Tibetan plateau, one sometimes hears a strange chattering -- an excited buzz that seems to emanate from the earth itself. Anyone who stops to look for the source will quickly realize that the ground is marked by a series of holes, from which small, shy creatures are likely to be watching.

The labyrinthine burrows made by these mammals, called pikas, provide them security. But they provide China and much of Asia security as well. By digging holes in the ground, pikas allow rainwater to percolate into the earth and replenish the water table. Without the humble pika, the water simply runs along the surface, triggering floods and soil erosion. So it is no coincidence that, when the pikas became the target of a state-led poisoning campaign beginning in the mid-twentieth century, waters began, slowly, to dry up across the country. The pika was accused of being a pest that destroyed grasslands. Scientists have pointed out that the pika prefers long grass and that its visibility is a symptom, not a cause, of grassland degradation. But policy is slow to catch up with science; pika killings continue today.

The pikas’ plight illustrates China's difficulties in confronting its water crisis. The economic development on which Beijing depends to keep the population in check poses a dire threat to the fragile ecosystems that the country and the continent depend on for water. It might thus seem politically impossible for China to enact any of the far-reaching environmental reforms that it needs. In the long term, though, absent any policy changes, China is likely on the path to serious civil strife, and perhaps even civil war.

THE WILD WEST

Most of China’s most important rivers originate in the plateaus of Tibet and the surrounding mountain ranges, an area known by scholars as the Third Pole because of its plentiful ice. The rivers flowing from the Third Pole -- among them, the Mekong, the Yangtze, and the Yellow River -- traditionally satisfied the majority of China’s water needs. But those waters, along with China’s other supplies, have been steadily disappearing. Since the 1950s, 27,000 rivers have vanished from China. China has only seven percent of the world’s freshwater to meet the needs of about one-fifth of the world’s population. Of that water, only 23 percent is located in northern China, which, as home to most of the country's major industries, uses much more water than China’s south. Meanwhile, much of the country's available water supply has been rendered unusable by pollution.

The rapid economic development of western China in the last decade and a half has put even more pressure on China’s water supply. Beijing has supported this economic development in spite of its pernicious ecological consequences, though, because it believes that economic growth is the key to calming the restive minorities in the west. (If Kazakhs, Tibetans, and Uighurs have plenty of employment opportunities, the theory holds, they will be less likely to rebel against Communist Party rule.) But Beijing’s control over what goes on in western China is limited. Grand engineering projects designed in Beijing and implemented in distant provinces do exist: think of the railway to Tibet or the Three Gorges Dam. But lately, the process of development in western China has mostly been ground-up -- cities have mushroomed out of nowhere, almost entirely unnoticed by the central government.

These cities are a byproduct of increasing unemployment in the country’s east, sharpened in the aftermath of the global financial crisis that began in 2008. Out of work even in the larger cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, many young Chinese moved to existing cities in western China, such as Lanzhou, Xining, and Urumqi. When those cities grew too crowded, they ventured into what had once been virtually untouched land. Some of them went in search of caterpillar fungus, which serves as an aphrodisiac in Chinese medicine; those who were adept at finding the fungus in the wilds of western China could afford to live in small towns by working only a few weeks a year. Others believed that they would be part of a new tourism industry; wealthy tour groups from eastern China pay considerable money to see the snowy peaks of Tibet, even if the tourism infrastructure that has been built to accommodate them considerably diminishes their beauty.

With these new residents has come haphazard new infrastructure. In Qinghai province, the government is building a barrage of new roadways from the capital of Xining to the southern city of Yushu. In the Tibet Autonomous Region, Beijing is planning to build additional railways linking Lhasa and Shigatse, and extending to the border of Nepal.

The problem is that this development is taking place in ecosystems that hold the headwaters for China’s water supply. And the pressures that urbanization puts on the headwaters -- through overuse, grassland degradation, pollution, and threats to species that have a role to play in maintaining the health of the river ecosystem -- is already having consequences downstream. On the Tibetan plateau, streambeds are dry and glaciers have melted into dead rock.

Similar threats confront China’s other water sources. The Pearl River in Southern China is drying. In China’s northeast, burgeoning construction projects are swallowing the wetlands that replenish the region's groundwater. As a result, water shortages have plagued the country in recent years, and experts predict that water demand will exceed supply by 2030. Given the unreliability of Chinese statistics and how swiftly ecosystems can shift course, that crunch could arrive even sooner than anticipated.

THE CHAIRMAN’S DELUSIONS

Rather than trying to conserve water, the Chinese government has endorsed a massive project inspired by China’s first communist leader, Mao Zedong. The south had plentiful water, Mao reasoned in 1952, whereas the north did not; therefore, water should be diverted from the south to the north. In 2002, the Communist Party initiated a massive engineering project in order to realize this vision: a series of canals that will draw approximately 45 billion cubic meters of water from the south to the north. The first canal has already opened in eastern China. Two more -- including a western route that will cut across the Himalayas -- are underway.

It is true that water resources are distributed unevenly, with the south home to 77 percent of the country’s total water resources. Of the total water resources available in northern China, about 45 percent get used; the south needs to use only about 20 percent of its water resources. It is also true that as the north continues to grow, so will its demand for water. But there are several problems with Beijing’s water diversion policy. First, the ecological risks are immense. It is quite possible that the project will disrupt the river systems and exacerbate water shortages, rather than solve them, by triggering soil erosion and eliminating species responsible for maintaining a healthy river. The Three Gorges Dam provides a cautionary tale about tampering with natural forces: research shows that the dam caused an increase in seismic activity and landslides. Downstream of the infamous project, water shortages disrupted irrigation.

Second -- and more important -- the project solves nothing in the long term. If northern China’s inefficient water use continues unchecked, the 45 billion cubic meters piped in from the south will eventually be too little -- especially with the rivers’ sources drying out. As Beijing diverts more and more water to the north, it will expose a long-standing political rift. In its long history, China has often split along north-south lines. Already, in southern places like Chongqing and Yunnan, one hears a growing complaint: Why should we southerners go thirsty so that the northerners can grow rich? As southern crops fail and people there feel the burden of water shortages, such complaints will only increase.

More generally, Beijing has yet to confront the many historical examples that suggest that water shortages can be a grave threat to national security. Persistent drought led to the collapse of Mayan civilization between 760 and 930 AD. In China, the Ming dynasty collapsed in the seventeenth century largely due to years of successive droughts. More recently, in the Middle East and South Asia, water shortages have led to political unrest. The recent swell of environmental protests in China indicates that it will not be immune to the trend.

A historian looking back in 2040 might well tell a story in which Beijing, unable to curb the state’s relentless water use, condemned it to growing water shortages. As the south grew parched, political grievances flared into violent opposition, which became increasingly difficult to put down as angered military commanders joined in and residents of the desiccated third pole -- Tibetans, Uighurs, Kazakhs -- went into revolt. Like the Ming dynasty before it, the historian would conclude, China had collapsed because thirst spawns violence.

WAR ON DROUGHT

To avoid serious ecological and political calamity, China’s central government will have to curtail its economic goals. Fortunately, Beijing’s recent climate change policies suggest that it may be prepared to make such a compromise. Ahead of the United Nations climate change talks to be held in Paris in 2015, the Chinese government has talked of initiating a “war on pollution” and reducing its carbon emissions. There are plenty of signs, from the investment in renewable energy to discussing emissions with the US in the Strategic Economic Dialogue, that at least some in the Chinese government are serious.

But cutting carbon emissions without a plan to address water issues -- and other problems like soil contaminated with toxins -- is futile. Beijing needs to develop a plan that addresses the entirety of its environmental woes. For one, it has to mandate sustainable development, which will require strengthening the central government against the local governments. Cities can no longer be allowed to spring up in western China without Beijing’s knowledge -- the effects on water supply are simply too great. The government will also have to bring locally administered industries, which emit more pollutants and use more water than they report, under control. To aid these efforts, the Chinese government should also try to rally popular support around sustainable development. The Chinese public is tired of the water shortages, unsafe drinking water, and soil contamination caused by haphazard urban development. Xi Jinping could present environmental reform as the next chapter of China’s glorious history and as part of the new model of great power relations that he has touted.

Once it has popular support in place, China could make other major changes. First, it would be worth putting a halt to the south-to-north water diversion project -- perhaps even going so far as to undo the existing canal in eastern China -- and insisting on water and energy efficiency in the north instead. As experts have pointed out, simple measures like water recycling and water price increases could help immensely. This would likely lead to vociferous complaints from provincial officials and industrial barons, but that should be preferable to steadily alienating the southern swath of the country and allowing the root causes of the problem to persist.

Second -- and this too would lead to some political backlash -- Beijing should move to curb, and perhaps even stop, development in the country's most ecologically sensitive areas. The Chinese government needs to treat the protection of the Tibetan plateau as a key to national security, not an impediment to economic growth, even if that means finding other ways of easing social tensions in western China. One possibility would be to stanch the flow of Han migrants, which feeds the resentment that ethnic minorities often feel.

Beijing should also consult the platoon of conservation biologists, both Chinese and foreign, who have long been warning of looming ecological catastrophe. China’s water security depends on a complex and subtle balance -- the forests that enrich the watersheds, the alpine grasslands that limit soil erosion, the relationships between myriad organisms which maintain healthy waterways -- that is extremely difficult to understand. The Chinese state may need to swallow its pride in reaching out to foreign experts, but that shouldn't be an impediment. China desperately needs to comprehend its environment in all its intricacy, and the country’s officials should be open to reaching out to anyone who might be able to help. Even the diminutive pika, after all, has a critical role to play.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Some good news for China (and for Australia and Canada, by extension, because both are resource based economies that are sensitive to Chinese demand), and, maybe, bad news who those who fear China's rise as a military power, in this article which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Financial Times:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/53fafa48-0cb8-11e4-90fa-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz37crPcU1r

I have mentioned before that, a few years ago, a middle ranked Chinese official told me that 8% was the target for growth because that was the rate the leadership saw as necessary to maintain social harmony. The social harmony thing is critical to the CCP, it is the equivalent of the ancient (and well established) notion of the mandate of heaven ~ it's what gives the CCP the right, even duty to govern.

I have also mentioned that I think that the best way to help long term, steady GDP growth (and to survive the inevitable recessions) is to tackle the endemic coruption that pervades almost every aspect of Chinese economic life at every level.

But, there is a contrary opinion which is in this article, in the Financial Post.

There is, as I have discussed elsewhere, a HUGE problem in the clarity of China's national accounts. I believe there is a clean set of books somewhere in Beijing; the leadership in the Zhongnanhai and a few dozen, not a hundred, senior bureaucrats know and understand the true state of the economy ... but I don't know, you don't know, and neither William Pesek at Bloomberg nor Gabriel Wildau, that authors of, respectively, the pessimistic and optimistic analyses, know, either.

 

[CougarKing]

Isn't it rather redundant for the PLA-N to be doing this considering they already have 4 other warships, including the destroyer Haikou, directly participating in the RIMPAC exercises?

Yahoo Finance/Business Insider

China Deploys Spy Ship Off The Coast Of Hawaii
Business Insider
By Paul Szoldra – 11 hours ago

(...SNIPPED)

China sent an electronic surveillance ship to keep an eye on the multinational Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) naval exercise, Sam LaGrone at the U.S. Naval Institute reported Friday.

(...EDITED)

China's uninvited fifth ship — a Type 815 Dongdiao-class intelligence vessel named Beijixing — is operating a safe distance away from the Hawaiian coast and the other 50 ships taking part in the exercise "in accordance with international law," James told the Advertiser.

(...END EXCERPT)

 

[a_majoor]

Some more details on China's water crisis. Overdrawing the water resources is a big problem everywhere (the Aral sea dried up because of the amount of water being diverted from the Amu Darya), but the scale and scope of China's water issues are extreme:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/3/4175514/china-rivers-disappear-from-the-map-water-supply-crisis

The Fringe
Why did 28,000 rivers in China suddenly disappear?

Startling government survey sheds new light on Chinese water crisis

By Amar Tooron April 3, 2013 09:09 amEmail@amartoo216Comments

For years, China claimed to hold an estimated 50,000 rivers within its borders. Now, more than half of them have abruptly vanished.

Last week, China's Ministry of Water Resources announced the results of a three-year survey of the country’s waterways, revealing startling declines in water supply. According to the census, there were 22,909 rivers in China as of 2011, each covering an area of at least 100 square kilometers. That marks a decrease of about 28,000 from the government's previous estimates, raising fears among environmentalists and putting Beijing on the defensive.

China's longest rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow, have each seen declining water levels in recent years, but the government's survey — its most comprehensive to date — may shed new light on the breadth and gravity of the country's crisis.

According to the South China Morning Post, officials attributed the decline to global warming and outdated mapping techniques, saying previous estimates were based on incomplete topographical maps from the 1950s. Experts, meanwhile, say there are more direct factors at play — namely, explosive economic development and poor environmental stewardship.

Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, acknowledges that updated mapping techniques could explain some discrepancies in river estimates, though he notes that the government's findings corroborate those from independent studies.

"Our research has shown that in some areas, especially in north China, rivers are drying up or turning into seasonal rivers," Ma said in a phone interview with The Verge. There are several explanations for this phenomenon, including deforestation and, to a less certain extent, climate change, though Ma says the two primary catalysts are pollution and overpopulation.

Together, they form a potentially disastrous combination. China's mushrooming population has added extra strain to its limited water supply, while the country's rampant industrialization has left many rivers contaminated.

"At the moment, pollution discharge is destroying the limited clean resources we have," Ma said.

The extent of China's pollution problem was laid bare in grisly fashion last month, when more than 12,000 dumped pig carcasses washed ashore in Shanghai and Jiaxing. Agricultural and industrial waste has had a pronounced human impact, as well, contaminating water supplies in so-called "cancer villages" — a moniker for areas with particularly high cancer rates.

Dead pigs and cancer villages

These incidents have drawn greater attention to China's water crisis, while reviving concerns over the environmental costs of unfettered economic development. Chinese lawmakers, however, have been grappling with these issues for decades.

China's modern water management system dates back to the 1960s, when a series of devastating floods forced Mao Zedong to commission an array of dams, reservoirs, and spillways. Mao's infrastructure helped prevent floods, but it also created ecological imbalances by blocking rivers that once flowed into the North China Plain. As a result, lakes and rivers in the region began drying up, and farmers began depleting well supplies.

Population growth has only compounded China’s supply issues. According to a 2006 study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), China's water use has increased more than fivefold since 1949, forcing the government to take even more drastic measures.

In 2008, China unveiled the Three Gorges Dam — a massive hydropower project that the country heralded as a marvel of engineering. Today, it's the largest hydropower structure in the world, though it has had disastrous ecological and social effects, resulting in deadly landslides and the displacement of an estimated 1.4 million people.

The government openly acknowledged these pitfalls in 2011, but it remains intent on building the South-North Water Transfer Project — an even grander undertaking that the New York Times described as "China's most ambitious attempt to subjugate nature." When completed, the $62 billion initiative will divert water from China's already drought-ravaged southern region to the northern Yellow and Hai rivers.

"An emergency relief effort"

Ma describes the Water Transfer Project as "an emergency relief effort," citing the dire situation in China's northeast region, though he doesn't see it as a viable long-term solution.

"They could run out of water without this project," he said, "but even the current volume of redirected water likely won't be enough to keep up with demand."

Instead, Ma and others say China should focus on controlling demand and regulating pollution, rather than re-allocating its water supply.

Xavier Leflaive, head of the water team at the OECD's Environment Directorate, says China should implement market-based reforms to encourage more responsible water usage, while phasing out fertilizer subsidies to mitigate agricultural runoff.

He acknowledges that China isn't the only country facing these issues; global water demand is expected to increase 55 percent over the next three decades, and rapidly developing countries like India have faced similar crises. But Beijing's unique economic and social developments add an extra layer of urgency. "This global trend is exacerbated in China by the speed and scale of urbanization and economic development, and by a lack of strong monitoring, inspection and enforcement capabilities," Leflaive said in an email to The Verge. "This lack is limiting the effectiveness of otherwise sound policies, laws and regulations."

China has implemented tougher regulations on water usage and pollutants — the so-called "three red lines" — though it remains to be seen whether they can be enforced across an expansive, and fast-growing economy.

The good news is that the Chinese government seems willing to take a harder stance on environmental stewardship. In the past, Beijing has scoffed at calls to control its greenhouse emissions, arguing that it shouldn't be punished for its own economic prosperity. But Premier Li Keqiang has adopted a more environmentally conscious tone in recent weeks, vowing to be more transparent about his country's ecological issues.

"We must take the steps in advance," Li said last month, "rather than hurry to handle these issues when they have caused a disturbance in society."

The premier has also promised to enforce current regulations on pollution, as he explained at his debut press conference in March.

"This government will show even greater resolve and take more vigorous efforts to clean up such pollution," Li said. "We need to face the situation and punish offenders with no mercy and enforce the law with an iron fist."

 

[Edward Campbell]

This, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Bloomberg News, might be a bit funny, except that it points to a real problem for China:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-22/ethiopia-becomes-china-s-china-in-search-for-cheap-labor.html?utm_content=buffercbe7f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Ethiopia Becomes China’s China in Global Search for Cheap Labor

By Kevin Hamlin, Ilya Gridneff and William Davison

Jul 22, 2014

Ethiopian workers strolling through the parking lot of Huajian Shoes’ factory outside Addis Ababa last month chose the wrong day to leave their shirts untucked.

Company President Zhang Huarong, just arrived on a visit from China, spotted them through the window, sprang up and ran outside. The former People’s Liberation Army soldier harangued them loudly in Chinese, tugging at one man’s aqua polo shirt and forcing another’s shirt into his pants. Nonplussed, the workers stood silently until the eruption subsided.

Shaping up a handful of employees is one small part of Zhang’s quest to profit from Huajian’s factory wages of about $40 a month -– less than 10 percent the level in China.

“Ethiopia is exactly like China 30 years ago,” said Zhang, 55, who quit the military in 1982 to make shoes from his home in Jiangxi province with three sewing machines and now supplies such brands as Nine West and Guess?. “The poor transportation infrastructure, lots of jobless people.”

Almost three years after Zhang began his Ethiopian adventure at the invitation of the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, he says he’s unhappy with profits at the Dongguan Huajian Shoes Industry Co. unit, frustrated by “widespread inefficiency” in the local bureaucracy and struggling to raise factory productivity from a level he says is about a third of China’s.

Four Tongues

Transportation and logistics that cost as much as four times those in China are prompting Huajian to set up its own trucking company. And the use of four languages in the plant -- Ethiopia’s national language, Amharic; the local tongue, Oromo; English and Chinese -- further complicates operations, Zhang says.

It takes two hours to drive 30 kilometers (18 miles) to the Huajian factory from the capital along the country’s main artery, illustrating the challenges. Oil tankers and trucks scream along the bumpy, potholed and, at times, unpaved road. Goats, donkeys and cows wander along the roadside and occasionally into bumper-to-bumper traffic. Minibuses and dented taxis, mostly blue Ladas from the country’s past as a Soviet ally, weave through oncoming traffic coughing a smoggy exhaust.

Huajian is nonetheless becoming a case study of Ethiopia’s emerging potential as a production center for labor-intensive products from shoes to T-shirts to handbags. In a country where 80 percent of the labor force is in agriculture, manufacturers don’t have to worry about finding new workers. Its population of about 96 million is Africa’s second-largest after Nigeria’s.

Seeking Investment

A combination of cheap labor and electricity and a government striving to attract foreign investment makes Ethiopia more attractive than many other African nations, said Deborah Brautigam, author of “The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa” and a professor of international development and comparative politics at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

“They are trying to establish conditions for transformation,” Brautigam said in a telephone interview. “It could become the China of Africa.”

Huajian’s 3,500 workers in Ethiopia produced 2 million pairs of shoes last year. Located in one of the country’s first government-supported industrial zones, the factory began operating in January 2012, only three months after Zhang decided to invest. It became profitable in its first year and now earns $100,000 to $200,000 a month, he said, calling it an insufficient return that will rise as workers become better trained.

Fleeing China

Under bright fluorescent lights, amid the drone of machines, workers cut, glue, stitch and sew Marc Fisher brown leather boots bound for the U.S. Meanwhile, supervisors monitor quotas on whiteboards, giving small cash rewards to winning teams and criticism to those falling short.

China, Africa and global retailers all have stakes in whether Ethiopia and such countries as Tanzania, Rwanda and Senegal become viable production bases for labor-intensive products. Promoting trade, boosting employment and spurring investment are among the topics that will be discussed on August 4-6 at the first White House U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington.

African nations have a compelling opportunity to seize a share of the about 80 million jobs that China will export as its manufacturers lose competitiveness, according to Justin Lin, a former World Bank chief economist who now is a professor of economics at Peking University.

‘Manufacturing Powerhouse’

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, who met on May 4, backed the move of Chinese industries to Ethiopia. China is “supporting Ethiopia’s great vision to become Africa’s manufacturing powerhouse,” Hailemariam told reporters at a joint press conference in Addis Ababa.

Weaker consumer spending in the U.S. and Europe after the financial crisis prompted global retailers to hasten their search for lower-cost producers, said Helen Hai, head of China Africa Consulting Ltd. in Addis Ababa. She ran Huajian’s Ethiopia factory until July of last year.

While China’s inland regions offered manufacturers a cheaper alternative to the export-linked coastal areas, rising costs and a limited pool of available workers now are undermining that appeal.

Average factory pay in Henan, about 800 kilometers from the coast, rose 103 percent in the five years ended in September and 80 percent in Chongqing, 1,700 kilometers up the Yangtze River. In the same period, salaries rose 82.5 percent in Guangdong, where Huajian has its base in the city of Dongguan.

‘Great Potential’

Cost inflation in countries including China has prompted Hennes & Mauritz AB, Europe’s second-biggest clothing retailer, to work with three suppliers in Ethiopia. The nation has “great potential” for production, H&M head of sustainability Helma Helmersson said in an April interview.

China’s average manufacturing wage is 3,469 yuan ($560) per month. Pay at the Huajian factory ranges from the basic after-tax minimum of $30 a month to about twice that for supervisors. By contrast, average manufacturing wages in South Africa, Africa’s biggest manufacturer, are about $1,200.

The duty-free and quota-free access that Sub-Saharan Africa enjoys for the U.S. and EU markets gives additional savings thanks to the African Growth and Opportunity Act for the U.S. and the EU’s Everything But Arms accord for the poorest countries. Import tariffs on shoes made in China range from 6 percent to as much as 36 percent, Zhang said.

Past-Future Business

A spokeswoman for Guess? confirmed that a licensee has done business with the Huajian Ethiopia factory in the past and may do so in the future.

A spokesman for Sycamore Partners, which owns Nine West, declined to comment on its business relationships and whether it has a relationship with Dongguan Huajian Shoes Industry Co. Marc Fisher Footwear is making shoes in the Ethiopia factory, Jaclyn Weissman, a spokeswoman for the company, wrote in an e-mail.

Signs of Ethiopia’s allure include factories outside Addis Ababa set up by leather goods maker Pittards Plc of the U.K. and Turkish textile manufacturer Ayka Tekstil. Foreign direct investment in the nation surged almost 250 percent to $953 million last year from the year before, according to estimates by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Zhang spends about half his time in Ethiopia, he says. During the visit last month, he spoke to about 200 uniformed Huajian supervisors, a mix of Ethiopians and Chinese, gathered in the parking lot. A giant plasma screen mirrored the crowd as Zhang hurried onto the stage.

Chant, March

He berated those assembled for a lack of efficiency, then praised them for their loyalty to Huajian, his words translated into Amharic and Oromo. He ordered them to march on the spot, to turn left and to turn right, all chanting together in Chinese.

“One two one,” they chanted. “One two three four,” as they marched in step. Slogans followed: “Unite as one.” “Improvement together.” “Civilized and efficient.”

They sang the “Song of Huajian,” whose words urged “We Huajian people” to bravely move forward, to hold the banner of Huajian high and to “keep our business forever.” Chinese supervisors led the song, their Ethiopian colleagues stumbling over some words and struggling to keep up.

Later, Zhang explained that he can’t be as tough on the staff as he would like.

“Here the management cannot be too strong as there will be a problem with the culture,” he said via a translator. “In China you can be strong, but not here. The conditions here mean we have to show respect. On one hand we have to have strict requirements; on the other hand we have to take care of them. They have their own dignity. They may be poor but we have to respect their dignity.”

Labor Demands

About 200 of the workers rebelled in early 2013, going on strike for two days after demanding a share of profits following a period in which Huajian’s orders surged, said Hai. The incident was resolved with the help of Ethiopian labor officials, she said.

Five workers interviewed at the factory on July 10 described a workplace of strict standards, with rewards for good results and penalties such as docked pay for ruined shoes.

Taddelech Teshome, 24, said her day starts at 7:20 a.m. after her Chinese employers provide employees with a breakfast of bread and tea. When her morning shift ferrying shoes from the factory floor to the warehouse is over, she gets fed the national staple, sour bread, for lunch. After work, a Huajian bus takes her to nearby Debre Zeit, a town where she rents a room with her sister for $18 a month.

Following Sister

She came to Huajian just over a year ago from her home 165 kilometers away in Arsi region after her sister started at the factory.

“The work is good because I pay my rent and I can look after myself,” she said, wearing an aqua Huajian polo shirt. “It’s transformed my life.” Taddelech said she wants to work for two more years at the plant and become a supervisor. She eventually aspires to build her own house.

With inflation at 8 percent -- down from 40 percent in July 2011 -– saving cash is tough. Mohammed al-Jaber, who earns $30 a month for gluing shoe linings eight hours a day six days a week, said he can add to his pay with perfect attendance each month -- a $7.50 bonus -- and overtime. Any extra gets sent home to his family in the Arsi region.

Once famine-plagued Ethiopia, run by former rebels since they overthrew a socialist military junta in 1991, is seeking investment to support a growth rate that’s expected to fall to 7.5 percent this year from 9.7 percent in 2013. The population is expanding annually by 2.9 percent, at a time when the urban unemployment rate is 17.5 percent.

Economic Transformation

Ethiopia aims “to transform the economy” via industrialization by attracting foreign investors to zones where key public services will be concentrated, State Minister Of Finance Ahmed Shide said in an interview in Addis Ababa.

One appeal for China: Ethiopia follows a similar tightly controlled, state-heavy economic model. Opposition parties won only one out of 547 parliamentary seats at the last election in 2010.

Ties are strong between the Communist Party of China and the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front: On July 10, Central Committee Political Bureau member Guo Jinlong visited Ethiopia and met with Prime Minister Hailemariam. The two pledged to enhance cooperation, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Key Bottlenecks

Ethiopia’s heavy public investment in infrastructure using credit from Chinese state banks promises to relieve some key bottlenecks. The Export-Import Bank of China is funding a railway from Addis Ababa to landlocked Ethiopia’s main port in neighboring Djibouti. Ethiopia lost its coastline when Eritrea became independent in 1993.

The Chinese and Ethiopian governments also are investing in hydroelectric plants -- including what will be Africa’s largest, the domestically funded Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile -- that should increase Ethiopia’s power supply five-fold by 2020.

That may help overcome obstacles including the supply of electricity and cumbersome customs and tax procedures. In May, a World Bank team went to visit a textile factory in the Eastern Industrial Zone, where the Huajian plant is located, and found they are faced with daily power outages lasting for hours, Ethiopia country director Guang Zhe Chen said.

Sustainable Power

“There’s a big issue if you can’t ensure sustainable power supply for industrial zones,” he said.

While countries like Ethiopia have the potential to host Asian manufacturers, a “surge” hasn’t occurred, in part because of trade logistics constraints. “Getting things in and out of Ethiopia is very expensive and time consuming.”

Ethiopia slipped one place to 125th in the World Bank’s 2014 Doing Business rankings for 189 economies. It was behind China, at 96th, and ahead of competitor Bangladesh, which ranked 130th, the Washington-based lender said on its website.

It’s easy to forget that China’s infrastructure also was rudimentary at a similar stage of development, said Lin. He recalls that the first time he made the 96-mile trip between Shenzhen and Guangzhou in southern China in the early 1980s it took more than 12 hours, including long waits for ferries to cross rivers. The same trip now can be done in two hours.

“There were no bridges,” Lin said in an interview.

Nor were workers accustomed to modern production techniques. When auto-parts maker Asimco Technologies Ltd. began manufacturing in China in the 1990s, workers weren’t responsive to training, said Tim Clissold, former president of the Beijing-based company and author of a memoir, “Mr. China.”

Smiling Politely

“It was very difficult to deliver improvements at individual factories,” he said. “You could do training, and everyone smiles politely and then continues doing what they were doing before.”

Now, rising Chinese wages that Zhang calls “an inevitable trend” are pushing Huajian to try to increase its workforce in Ethiopia to as many as 50,000 within eight years.

A model of a planned new plant at the edge of Addis Ababa is displayed at the factory. The 126-hectare (341-acre) complex, partly financed by more than $300 million from Huajian, will include apartments for workers, a “forest resort” district and a technical university.

At the gathering in the parking lot, after supervisors sang Huajian’s company song, Zhang dismissed the Ethiopian contingent. Then he continued haranguing the Chinese managers. To make his point that structure was needed to keep employees in focus, he thrust a broomstick toward them repeatedly, then toward the remote camera that was feeding to the plasma screen, the image blurring with each prod.

Then he left the stage, laughing and raising a triumphant fist.

Here's the problem: there are, rally three Chinas ~

    1. The rich, sophisticated, high wage East coast;

    2. The growing middle region; and

    3. The poor West.

Those jobs in Ethiopia, making shoes, are needed in the poor West of China, but wages, for all Chinese, and expectations are set in the rich East coast cities. It's like when industrial, 'metal bending' jobs moved from America to Korea. Those jobs were needed in e.g. Appalachia, Mississippi and Louisiana but wages and expectations were set in New York and Texas and California and so the Koreans got the jobs, and the middle class lifestyle. Ditto for China, today.


Edit to add:

Here is a useful graphic to illustrate China's problem:

Source: World Economic Forum

 

[CougarKing]

Yet another sign of the gradual changes China is implementing in the territory in preparation for 2047?

Source: Janes' Defense Weekly

China builds listening station in Hong Kong

Ian Cameron, Hong Kong - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
24 July 2014

 

The existence of a People's Liberation Army (PLA) communications installation atop Hong Kong's tallest mountain - the 957 m-high peak of Tai Mo Shan - recently came to light.

Construction began around 2010, with a geodesic dome first appearing in satellite imagery in 2011. The facility has been operational for approximately three years.

The installation sits inside a fenced compound that also includes a Civil Aviation Department terminal area radar and Hong Kong Observatory weather radar. The Hong Kong government has admitted giving the PLA a plot of land measuring 9,300 m² on which the army has constructed a geodesic dome, antenna mast, two large buildings, and a basketball court for use by the resident garrison.

The PLA has installed security cameras and also tinted building windows to reduce observation. On two occasions IHS Jane's has observed PLA vehicles ascending Tai Mo Shan to deliver supplies or replacement staff. Personnel wearing PLA Navy-style uniforms have been observed inside the compound.

The PLA has refused to explain the facility's purpose, claiming that "military secrecy" means it is "not appropriate for disclosure", although it is extremely likely that it is an electronic and signals intelligence (ELINT/SIGINT) facility. If so, the facility will be similar in purpose to a British radar station based on Tai Mo Shan and used to monitor mainland China until the colony was returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

The PLA occupies 18 military sites in Hong Kong covering 2,700 hectares that were transferred from the British Army as Military Installations Closed Areas (MICA) in 1997. The Tai Mo Shan radar site does not appear on official lists of PLA installations.

A 19th site is a controversial new military berth set aside for PLA warships on prime Hong Kong Island waterfront.


(...EDITED)

 

[YZT580]

Perhaps the water issue is what is causing Chinese interest in the Arctic.  There has been considerable speculation regarding the harvesting of ice burgs for the arid lands of the middle east but maybe it will be China that starts to infringe on the lands of the north in an effort to obtain potable water at a reasonable cost.  Water is the one staple that people WILL go do war to obtain.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Water is incredibly expensive to transport.

It would be far cheaper to buy natural gas, ship it China and power desalinization plants, than to harvest icebergs.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Think three rivers: Yenisei and Lena and Amur.

Yenisei River Watershed

Lena River Watershed

Amur River Watershed


Edit: typo